The problem I'm experiencing is that synergy prevents click and drag actions in 'some' windows applications.

I notice it most often in photoshop - while synergy server is running I am unable to apply a mask or use any paint or rubber tool for more than a single click.

The problem also occurs to a lesser extent in other programs, i.e. in ms word I am sometimes unable to highlight text using the mouse - no problem if using the keyboard though, and since I mostly use the keyboard it doesn't bother me so much, however rearranging the text with a mouse is difficult.

Understandably its somewhat irritating to have to quit synergy - which otherwise works perfectly - just to apply a mask or rearrange some text.

The problem goes away the moment I close synergy server and comes back when I start it up again.

3 Answers
3

It is a bug, and is normally caused by "stuck keys" (when Synergy is mistakenly telling the OS a key is being pressed when it isn't.) Usually having the Escape key stuck prevents dragging and dropping. Workarounds for this are varied, but for me (with a Windows client and Linux server) pressing all the modifier keys one by one while on the client screen (alt, shift, ctrl, win), the escape key, and also pressing alt+ctrl+pause (to bring up the Windows alt+ctrl+del screen) and escape fixes the problem (until the Windows PC is next locked with Win+L or by the screensaver.)

ok, that sort of makes sense - so to get around the problem you press alt then shift then ctrl then win then esc and alt-ctrl-pause - i had noticed the shift key getting stuck and that pressing it once or twice fixed it, didn't think of another key being stuck - if it works i'll be back to accept your answer
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m3zApr 6 '11 at 7:51

Just a data point, I'm having the same issue with a slightly different configuration (Synergy 1.4.8 Beta, Windows 7 x64 server with 2 monitors, Linux client with 1 monitor). Malvineous' answer also resolves the behavior for me - moving the mouse to the Linux screen and tapping alt, shift, ctrl, and esc one at a time seems to fix the problem.

The behaviors I was seeing:

In MS Word and MS Outlook, I was unable to click and drag to select text

In Altium Designer I was unable to drag windows from one monitor to another

I don't know about the click and drag issue, but I had the same problem with selecting (highlighting) text with shift+arrow keys. Based on the information here indicating that only the right shift key is affected (which is, in fact, the case), I was able to work around it by remapping the right shift key to the left shift key with this AutoHotKey script:

#SingleInstance force
#NoTrayIcon
RShift::LShift

I went ahead and compiled it to an executable and put it in my startup directory.